Aboard the Strahl
by Element's Sole Protector
Summary: She knows them well, of course. She has housed them through their good times and their bad, and she has the cute snapshots to prove it. A look inside the intertwined lives of the six most important people in Ivalice.
1. Prologue: Fire Illuminates

And here begins _Aboard the Strahl_.

* * *

-Prologue: _Fire Illuminates_-

* * *

There is a sort of tranquil silence cloaking the night, and she is glad of it. It has been a long day, and she is tired. She has been worked hard, and all up to this, the greatest part of said day. Now is the time to relax and watch her companions unwind.

They are stretching, murmuring nonsense, and speaking in an easy way that she just loves. Someone, she isn't sure who, has started a fire; she feels soothed and threatened all at once. Fire is such a _tricky_ being, and being rather predictable herself makes her averse to the tricky types.

Fire glows. She knows this well. It glints off her sides warmly, but does not wander near her eyes and blind her as sunlight occasionally does. It lights up _their_ faces too, although she hardly needs light to know them by now. She knows when each of the _shower_, for crying out loud.

"It's so quiet."

Penelo speaks first, which is interesting in itself. She hardly talks, and so what she _does_ say is usually valuable.

Vaan places his arms behind his head. They encountered no monsters today, and so he has a familiar restless look in his eyes. "Let's play a game or something..."

"_No_," Ashe and Basch growl together. Vaan ducks his head and sulks, to no avail. Even she can see that the regal princess will not budge this night. Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca is not one to budge often or at all, but young Vaan is slow to realize this. Still he tries to bend her will. She will be pleasantly surprised and amused if he ever succeeds.

"Well," the youngest Hume boy presses, "let's do _something_!"

"Yes, quite."

Ah, there was his voice. That was he who polished her sides and fixed her innards. His voice is smoother than oil, as always, weaving around at a leisurely pace to whatever point he currently wishes to make.

"We have a long day of travel tomorrow," Balthier continues, ever their master as he is hers. "_I_ advise that the thing we do should be to _rest_."

His partner, the other who flies and fixes her, the other she respects, stirs to speak as well, and all others still to listen. She is easily the oldest and wisest, being neither Hume nor machine but viera, and, after Balthier, the _Strahl_'s personal favorite.

"He is correct," Fran says at last. Her red eyes gleam, dancing with the fire. "We can do nothing if we are not properly rested. Should we succumb to games, we would be but prey for the beasts lurking beyond."

She gives Vaan a stern look here, and he ducks his head again, this time contritely—but the _Strahl_ is not fooled at all. Fran doesn't mind Vaan as much as she pretends to. Not now, anyway. She remembers all too clearly a time when Penelo was the only person everyone liked; it is much easier now, when impatience, disgust and outright dislike are pretenses and that only.

"If it's time for bed," Penelo points out, "why isn't anyone moving?"

They all look to Basch then, for it is he who usually dismisses himself first: gets up, stretches, nods at everyone else, looks the Princess's way and hesitates, then walks off. (Of all the new fliers, she has watched the Captain the most.) Now he must explain his hesitance to leave to the others, who have gotten used to his being first to succumb to the siren calls of sleep...

"It's cold," he says defensively, gesturing to the still-blazing fire.

A good icebreaker—they all smile.

Balthier chuckles. She knows he is thinking that Basch doesn't know real cold at all—he's spent most of his life in Dalmascan climate, after all. And the man _doesn't_ know real cold—he wasn't raised or even _built_ in Archadia.

Ashe is looking at her bare left ring finger. She is thinking of Rasler, whom she mentions sparingly, and of the man who has taken one of the tokens of their wedding from her, whom she shouts at quite a lot.

Vaan is looking at—well, at _her_, the _Strahl_, admiring how she shines in the firelight. She rather likes the attention. The _Strahl_ is not sure, though, whether the boy is more in awe of her the machine or of Balthier the pilot, his master and (dare she think it?) friend.

Penelo is dozing, or close to. Soon she will be dreaming of dancing, or the skies—or maybe it is her brothers' turn to star in her dreams this time. Her twin ponytails are surprisingly dull under light of fire and stars above.

Fran, on the other hand, doesn't show the slightest sign of being tired. Her long white ears twitch as she decides suddenly to play sentinel. She is quite good at it, most likely because of a mixture of things in her past and the fact that she is used to playing mother in the group, watching the surroundings for danger. Her eyes will sharpen and her posture will freeze, and then she is on alert, and not to be disturbed.

Very well, then. They would watch together, whether the others fell asleep at last or not. Between machine and viera, no beasts would emerge from the woodwork (is that term an insult to Fran, she wonders?) and make them prey tonight.

There is something immensely comforting in watching over these six. She has not seen and gotten to know them as long as she likes to pretend she has, really. There was a time not long gone when something went wrong inside her, where the frightening stuff and wonder that the viera calls _Mist_ almost completely undid her. She was separated from her master for a long, long time. Loneliness threatened to almost consume her before she was rescued from the throes of death. And by one of those cute little things with pompoms on their heads, no less.

Needless to say, she loves those dearly now, more so than she did when they came to her for simpler check-ups.

They are no longer restless. On the contrary, rest seems to be finding them. Now they are... falling asleep. Balthier throws out a pinch of something to muffle the fire as Penelo's eyes close. She gives out the tiny sigh of a satisfied child and then makes no more noise. It occurs to her, still serenely watching them, that if her master falls asleep before she does, she will have trouble settling down herself. His velvet voice calms, lulls anything in range. –Then again, he has had a long day even if an undisturbed-by-beasts one, and it is hardly fitting to have an exhausted sky pirate.

Exhausted sky pirates tended to be caught, tried, and executed in front of unsympathetic lords and ladies.

...Yes, better that he rests.

She shall indeed have to calm herself tonight. Balthier has too surrendered to sleep.

Now Basch is drifting off...

* * *

-I do not own _Final Fantasy XII_, except in that I own the game.

-In my mind, Ashe tricked Balthier just a bit while hesitating, in that she gave him _her_ wedding ring and kept Rasler's on her finger.

-In case the summary didn't clue you off, this chapter was told from the point of view of the _Strahl_. It will be one of few like that.

Please read and review! Commentary is welcome. My cat is not a satisfactory feedback source.

_Iter Iteneris Suscipio_...


	2. Water Dances

Chapter Two at last! Sorry for the delay--writing previously-unseen interactions was more difficult than I thought. Ah, arrogance.

Balthier, Balthier, Ffamran mied Bunansa... (dances) He's _here_!

And **a note**: this is _not_ set in a romantic tone. In fact, none of them between two people will be.

* * *

~_Water Dances_~

* * *

It is hard to balance on one foot, Penelo decides. Even after all those years of secret practice, there is an art in this motion which defies scorn. It's why she likes to dance, and stick her fingers in Scorn's eyes. --Well, she enjoys it too, of course. It is soothing, and there is some magic in moving as fluidly as the sea.

The sea. She's scarcely even _seen_ the sea.

Penelo counts her steps and twirls carefully. _One. Two. Three. Four. Two at a time now--one-two, three-four._ She floats like a bird, twirls like gil laid down on a counter. Princess Ashe had once told her that she admired the way that Penelo's every step was unconsciously a dance, and she had glowed with pride and stammered her own thanks and praise for Her Royal Majesty.

Admiration and laudation from the Princess of Dalmasca, her own Dalmasca! She could never have dreamed of such a thing. Princesses, sky pirates and knights--it is all like some big fairy tale her brothers used to tell her, years ago.

Exuberance carries her a few steps too far--straight into the arms of Balthier, sky pirate and womanizer extraordionaire.

_...Well, perhaps 'womanizer' is a little harsh. He's really very nice when he wants to be._

"Oh!" she manages to say aloud.

"Oops--didn't mean to disturb you."

Balthier is giving her a searching look. She tries not to cringe under his eyes, but it is difficult; of all the people in their group, she is most intimidated not by the princess, Basch or the viera, but him. He is the most mysterious in motive and overall behavior, and Penelo has no idea, most of the time, what he thinks of her.

He speaks again. "Practicing, are you?"

She nods. "Just keeping in shape. I don't want to be out of practice, when we make it back to Rabanastre."

Balthier stuffs his hands in his pockets. He circles her, studying her tapping foot (she can never quite keep still when she's nervous). He smiles, not a sky pirate's smile, not a ladies' man smile, but a gentle, genuine smile. "'When' we make it back? You're ever the optimist, Penelo."

Penelo smiles too. She likes it when he calls her by name, as he sometimes does--it means that he notices her, values her. "Of course. Someone has to be, after all."

The sky pirate nods. She notices then, for the first time, that his partner Fran is nowhere in the area; then again, neither is Vaan. Ashe and Basch are relaxing near the fire, closer to camp than she and Balthier.

She resumes dancing, twirling, spinning--she has hardly ever been shy in front of others, and she will hardly stop now. So lost is she in the beauty of movement and the art of keeping time that she does not notice that five pairs of eyes are eventually watching her ever step.

"I used to do this a lot back home... dance for people, I mean, to lift their spirits," she says over her shoulder. "That was before I started working for Migelo."

"Yes, your overprotective bangaa guardian," comes his voice in return, carrying a slight hint of humor.

"He's really very nice," Penelo says, and then remembers that she thought the same thing about the man behind her. She elaborates: "You must have caught him on a bad day."

(She does not, of course, know that her kidnapping set the circumstances of their meeting.)

"Oh, did I?"

_Is that a snort I hear?_

Never mind that. She is getting distracted, again.

The blond-braided girl moves to count again. She wants to regain the smoothness of the sea, to move like the waves. _One, two, three, four--five, six, seven, eight._

Balthier's voice breaks her concentration. "Dance for me?"

She turns, startled, to see the others watching too--even Vaan and Fran have returned from whatever separate ways called them.

With a brave intake of breath and a few preliminary stretches, Penelo begins.

There is silence as she balances on one foot, then the other; one hand, then the other. She spins in a circle before a new idea comes to her: she will dance as if with a partner. It is always something she has wanted to try, other than with clumsy Vaan, teasing Tomaj, or someone much older or younger than her.

So it is precisely what she does next, staying calm, fluid, perfect.

Suddenly, with eyes closed, Penelo feels hands in hers. Startled again, she opens her eyes to see Balthier there, winking at her, putting an arm about her waist like a gentleman. His brown eyebrows rise suggestively, and they begin to dance together. They twirl, spin and (in Penelo's case) leap. He twists her into him, then away. Her eyes sparkle; he smells like the finest marketplace traders on a summer day, the ones who sell the best and most expensive products, the ones she and Vaan could never before reach. Watching her dance alone and return shyly to him, he notes that she smells like wildflowers, her favorite pure thing to pick after a group kill--one of the things he was forbidden to pick in his old life as above even gentry.

And as they move and the others clap, Penelo realizes that she has never felt as happy, as calm, as _safe_ around Balthier as she does now. The dance ends in an overdramatic flourish (his touch), and she is at peace.

She is protected.

She is liked, even admired.

"Thank you," she manages, breathless after all her practice. "That... was _amazing_."

He bends and kisses her closest hand, as any gentleman would. "Anything to please a lady. And it was good to see you smiling."

Balthier then makes her a bow and wanders off to who-knows-where, stretching casually as he joins his partner by the trees.

_And_, Penelo realizes too, as she curtseys in return, as she is surrounded by the others and their admiration at her skill, she has just made a new friend.

* * *

Hope you liked!

The next is called _Earth Holds Firm_.


End file.
